


you'll know

by h0ldthiscat



Category: The Americans (TV 2013)
Genre: F/M, Season 2, not new just posting here
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-10
Updated: 2021-02-10
Packaged: 2021-03-17 00:47:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,885
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29341542
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/h0ldthiscat/pseuds/h0ldthiscat
Summary: There is no return address, but Elizabeth knows who it’s from. Only one person knows she’s here.
Relationships: Elizabeth Jennings/Philip Jennings | Clark Westerfeld
Kudos: 17





	you'll know

**Author's Note:**

> not new, just migrating over from my tumblr

The letter arrives on the day she walks the length of the front porch by herself. This is how she measures time now, not in sunrises but in accomplishments: the day she can sit up without a shooting pain in her side, the day she slept through the night before, the day she sneaks a cigarette.

She sits on the porch as the car pulls up, the sun painting the lake an earthy orange in the gathering dark. Elizabeth descends the cabin stairs to help her, but the older woman waves her off.

“Something came for you,” Donna says, holding a letter-sized envelope.

Elizabeth frowns. “Are you sure?”

Donna hands the letter over, balancing an armful of groceries on her hip. There is no return address, but Elizabeth knows who it’s from. Only one person knows she’s here. A breeze whips down the narrow road past the cabin, brushing her hair back over her shoulder, and suddenly she is very cold.

“How does stew sound?” Donna asks, entering the house.

“Good,” Elizabeth murmurs, turning the letter over in her hands and following her nurse inside.

If something we really wrong he’d have signaled somehow. But they hadn’t said they’d write. She’d called the kids once, on a line with a bad connection, so it was hard to tell if they were disappointed or excited that she’d be gone for a little while. There had been joy in Paige’s voice when she realized her father was coming home. She remembers that.

Elizabeth slips a finger under the envelope flap and it opens with ease. There is his neat block lettering: he’d always been more comfortable writing in capitals, a crutch that had caused him frustration during training, even though their instructors kept saying it didn’t matter much. His confident lettering is larger than the lines on the notebook paper, probably torn from Paige’s school binder.

Her chest constricts as she thinks of what they must be doing now. Paige and Henry trundling down the stairs and coming to rest their elbows on the kitchen table, heads bent over a meal served on woven placemats. Philip with a handsome smile, proud of the food he’s made, though it will surely make Henry wrinkle his nose, despite Philip’s best efforts. She aches for him, for all of them. For her family.

There is no date on the letter, no introduction, no _Dear Elizabeth._ He simply begins:

_The furnace had some trouble last week. Someone came to fix it but now it makes this hissing sound when the heat comes on. Henry says it sounds like there’s a ghost in the basement. His hockey team moved their practices to the other ice rink, off Williamsburg. Matthew Beeman offered to drive him, since he needs to practice for his driving test, so he’s been taking him to and from Thursday practices._

_Paige keeps mentioning she wants to learn to play guitar, but when I offer to take her to the music store she pretends like I’m crazy for even suggesting it. She used to love singing when she was little. Those concerts she’d put on for us. I told her Ellen and Jackie could sleep over next weekend and I already regret it._

_I like where you hung that new photo in the hallway. Was that in Boston? I don’t think Henry even remembers that trip, he was so young. God, that awful mustache I had. Why did you let me do that?_

_Even though it’s been weeks since you slept here I can still smell you. Your hair, your shampoo, your skin, on your pillow. I missed sleeping beside you when I was away. Those nights in that stupid hotel, that apartment. I missed you. The feel of your body next to mine. I miss you now. So much it’s like an ache. I love you._

He doesn’t sign it.

She scans the edges of the paper through watery eyes, lips pressed tightly together. But there are no markings, no coded messages, nothing between the lines. This is a letter from a husband to a wife. This is a letter from Philip. 

“Everything alright?” Donna calls from the kitchen.

“Fine,” Elizabeth answers, her throat tight.

She wants to get in the car and leave tonight, drive all the way home and sleep in her own bed, kiss the tops of her children’s heads, feel Philip’s hands at her waist. If she closes her eyes she can feel him at her bedside in that warehouse, the only thing in focus as she slipped in and out of consciousness.

Sometimes the way he looks at her makes her feel like her chest will split open.

______________________________

Paige remembers suddenly as she hoists her purse over her shoulder. “Mom–my necklace. The one you untangled.”

Elizabeth’s brow knits as she sips from one of their speckled coffee cups. “Paige, there’s no time.”

“I’m taking it with me, it’s my favorite necklace!” She puts her bag back down and heads out of the kitchen.

“Well hurry up, we don’t want to hit traffic!” her mother’s voice calls up the stairs after her.

Paige rolls her eyes as her hand trails up the banister. Her shoes scuff against the carpet in her parents’ bedroom. When she was little she’d thought nothing of their requests for privacy; plenty of her friends’ parents had similar rules. But like always, her situation had been a little different. She and Henry were never allowed to wake them up in the middle of the night. Even when she was little, she’d slept with the light on after a nightmare instead of waking them up.

She shakes her head and sighs, looking at the pile of earrings scattered across the top of her mother’s dresser. “I don’t see it!” she calls, exasperated.

Against her better judgement, she opens the first drawer of the dresser, slow so as not to make noise. What she finds is disappointingly boring: an extra pack of cigarettes, a couple pairs of stringy black underwear, stockings she hasn’t seen her wear in years, a near-empty bottle of perfume, and a few old jewelry boxes–none of which contain the necklace she’s looking for. She’s about to give up when her fingers brush against the bottom of the door and slide against a smooth, folded piece of paper.

“Paige, enough, we have to leave now!”

Downstairs, she hears the garage door open. Before she can change her mind she slips the paper into her jacket pocket and closes the drawer.

“I couldn’t find it,” she tells her mother as they hurry out the door.

“I left it right on the dresser, are you sure?”

“Yes,” Paige sighs, sliding into the backseat, crammed against her suitcase and a small stack of boxes.

“This is that discipline we talked about, Paige. If you can’t trust yourself, your own abilities, you’re not going to–”

“I get it, thank you,” she snaps.

“What’s the address again?” Philip jokes as he pulls onto the main road.

“Not funny, Dad,” Paige says.

They pass the small creek, the Lutheran Church with the big parking lot, the small white house on the corner two blocks up with green shutters. And she wishes it felt different, that it felt like something was changing, that her going to college was the monumental event it was for so many of her peers. But as they drove, as her mother stared pensively out the window, as her father fidgeted with the radio dial, she realized this was just another drive. Just another day with a secret inside of her so huge she felt like it would one day swallow her whole.

It is hours later when she remembers the letter, after she’s met her roommates Gwen and Sarah, after a mandatory meeting hosted by the over-enthusiastic resident advisor, after she collapses on her bed amidst a mess of half-opened boxes. She sees the letter sticking out of her coat pocket at the foot of her bed and she reaches for it. It is folded neatly into thirds, and the handwriting is her mother’s too-perfect cursive. Even though the paper is unlined, the words are perfectly straight across the page.

Paige reads and her chest tightens.

_Dear Philip,_

_It’s peaceful here. Lonely. I remember when the kids were young, I’d dream about one day, one hour, one minute that was my own, that wasn’t spent changing diapers or making lunches or working. Now the silence is unsettling._

_Aunt Helen is doing much better these past few days. We’re making great progress and I might be able to return sooner than we thought. If anything changes, I’ll let you know. At the earliest, I’d come home for Henry’s birthday. I know he wants that video game but I’d honestly rather give him anything else._

_I feel helpless here, Philip. I don’t like that. All that time wasted and now_

There’s a large gap on the page here, and when she begins again the letters are thicker, written with a different pen. Paige remembers her own journals as a child, smudged with blue and black ink, the long loops of her _g_ ’s and _y_ ’s.

_I stared at your letter for hours before sitting down to write this. You know I’m not good at putting these things into words. Everything I’m thinking seems impossible to write down, but once I do, it’s only a hollow echo of how I really feel. Every moment I’m awake I’m thinking of you, and when I sleep you’re there in my dreams. It never used to be like that. I never used to dream._

_Elizabeth_

Paige refolds the letter with shaking hands, her face burning like that time she hadn’t knocked on her parents’ door. But this letter feels more invasive somehow, more intimate. She’s never heard her mother talk like this before.

She unpacks a box of clothes to keep her head from spinning, then goes to the telephone in the kitchen. The one in her bedroom isn’t set up yet. She dials and it rings five times, six. To her surprise, her mother says “hello?” just before the machine picks up.

“Mom,” she says, voice tight in her throat.

“Paige. Did you forget something?”

“I just–”

Suddenly she doesn’t know why she called. She’ll see her on Sunday, they’ve already set the meeting point and what she’s supposed to wear. A thin envelope of driver’s licenses with different names is already hidden away in her new room, somewhere no one will find. And if they do, they won’t think it odd that a college freshman has a couple of fake IDs.

“Paige?” Her mother’s voice is soft like it gets sometimes, like she hasn’t heard it in months. “Everything–”

“I love you, Mom,” she blurts. “And thank you. For–for untangling my necklace. I realized once I got here I’d already packed it.”

“Oh. Well that’s good.”

Paige clutches the phone cord, the maroon coils twisting around her middle finger like a snake. “I’m looking forward to getting our nails done on Sunday,” she says, making sure to use the phrase she was given.

“Me too,” Elizabeth answers.

Paige breathes, and knows she’s on the precipice of understanding something. And she hears her mother’s breathing, and she knows she feels it too.


End file.
